It is known that tertiary amine salts may be treated with ethylene oxide to yield the analogous quaternary ammonium compound (British patent specification No. 448,251 and U.S. Pat. No. 2,897,170). It is also known that ampholytic quaternary ammonium compounds can be produced from tertiary ammonium compounds by treatment with monochloroacetic acid or sodium monochloroacetate. Also, ampholytic compounds derived from imidazolines are marketed under the trademark Miranol. These compounds and the process of preparing them are set forth in U.S. Pat. No. 2,528,378.
The reactions set forth in U.S. Pat. No. 2,528,378 are time consuming, requiring several hours to go to completion. Also, sodium chloride formed as a by-product must be removed if a salt free product is desired and this requires expensive purification steps.
Ampholytic compounds can be produced by reacting primary or secondary amines with an acrylic ester and hydrolyzing the resulting aminocarboxylic ester (U.S. Pat. No. 2,468,012). But these compounds are not quaternary ammonium compounds and reaction of an acrylic ester with tertiary amines does not occur under the same conditions.
Cyanoethylation of primary or secondary amines also occurs readily, but again no such reaction occurs with a tertiary amine, and quaternary ammonium compounds are not produced.
Cyanoethylation reactions of the following types do occur with tertiary amines: ##STR2## But, again, quaternary ammonium compounds are not produced.